1. Field
The present invention relates generally to location based applications and services based upon the context of a user or user device, and in one example, to displaying search results according to the relative distance between a user and the location of the search results.
2. Related Art
Mobile devices, such as mobile phones, are becoming ever more prevalent and increasingly capable of determining the context of the environment in which they are used. For example, location services and applications may be used to supply information or services to a user's mobile device based on determined location information of the mobile device, e.g., via GSM network cell ID, Enhanced Observed Time Different (EOTD)-based location, Global Position System (GPS), and other location technologies. For instance, a location based application may display a map of a mobile device's determined location and provide an indication of one or more point-of-interest locations (such as a business, a tourist attraction, a person, e.g., a member of a user's social network, or the like) within a given geographical region.
Location services and applications employ a variety of techniques to represent points of interest in map interfaces. For example, locations are often represented using various types of icon graphics overlaid on a map which may be accompanied by text representing the type or even the name of the corresponding location. Alternatively, locations may be represented in a list ordered by their respective distance from a particular location. Unfortunately, such conventional representations have inherent limitations depending, for example, on the scope of the geographic area represented (e.g., the map magnification or zoom level), or the size of the display on which the information is presented.
For example, if a user of a mobile device wants to see all of the Italian restaurants in New York City, conventional techniques are generally inadequate for representing the hundreds (if not thousands) of locations in the five boroughs, particularly on the relatively small display of a typical mobile device. Either the icons presented would obscure the map on which they are overlaid, or the list of locations would be far too long to scroll through.